Whiplash
by The Admiralty
Summary: An average girl gets sucked into a compitention she barely understands, let alone is prepaired for. this is her story as she fights not only to survive, but to adapt.
1. A Peculiar Day

Warning: this fanfic makes use of adult language and semi-frequent references to adult situations. You have been warned.

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><p>"<span>Well shit.<span>" there really wasn't that much more to say about the matter at hand. Here I was, naked as a jaybird and chained down to a metal table, and the blasted thing was cold to boot. I guess today probably isn't my finest moment. In all likelihood I am about to die … again. I am far from what you would call normal, however I wasn't always this way. But you are probably confused, allow me to explain …

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><p><em>Much, much earlier…<em>

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit." I was running late on the way to class, I had already been late too many times and if I didn't make it to class on time today my teacher was going to fail me. My name is Rachel. I am five-foot-four-inches tall and built like a whip, lots of stringy muscles and not a single curve in sight. And at the moment I am running flat out from my car to the building my class is in, being immensely grateful for having done cross country in high school and cursing myself for not keeping in shape after I graduated. My glass eye was itching like crazy, like it usually does for a short while after I just wake up, the patch I usually wear over it half-stuffed into my back pocket. Hoping it didn't fall out, I rounded the corner of the last building between me and my goal.

That is when I saw _him_. He wasn't hard to spot, as he was nearly directly in my path, well over six feet tall and wearing a heavy black duster, despite the fact that is was nearly 80 degrees out today and not a cloud in sight. He wasn't walking around like many of the other students in the area, but instead was just standing there as if waiting for something. I figured that he was just another one of those harmless oddballs that seemed drawn to this stupid school. Turns out I was wrong.

My plan was to just ignore him and keep running, unfortunately he didn't ignore me. I was only about twenty feet from him when he made his move. As best as I can remember his coat flared outward as if it had gotten caught in a sudden powerful wind, though there wasn't even a breeze, and he pulled out what looked like the mutant lovechild of an Xbox, an AK-47, and someone's tongue. I had exactly enough time to think 'Oh, Shi-' before the bastard shot me.

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><p>Jerking forward, I found myself floating. The only definite feature of the place I found myself was the complete lack of colour. By that I don't mean that the place was white or grey or even that black that is only found in the deepest of basements on an overcast and stormy night when the power is dead and you can't find the blasted candles, no mean the place didn't have colour at all. I didn't have much time to ponder this little bit of weirdness however, as a voice behind me nearly immediately spoke up. "<span>Ah, at last. The next player takes the stage.<span>"

Turning around, which proved as easy as thinking about doing so, I spotted the owner of the voice. He looked to be in his younger twenties like me, with shoulder-length greasy hair and a stupid little tuff of hair on the tip of his chin. However the features that quickly drew my attention were his deep blue eyes, followed quickly by the fact that he was wearing what looked like a toga crossed with the breastplate of a suit of armour. About a hundred questions burst into my mind all at once. However, only two of them managed to get out of my mouth. "Who the hell are you and what do you mean by that?"

Before I was even done asking the question, he quirked one corner of his mouth into a vague half-smile that immediately made me want to strangle the ever-loving shit out of him. "Many people have called me many different things, the name I like best out of them is '_The Storm_'. And as for what I meant, I can only assume that means you are new to this wonderful little game we find ourselves in. I do love explaining the game to newcomers. In short, willingly or not, you find yourself enrolled in a tournament of sorts. The rules of the tournament are simple, gain power and destroy your enemies. Each time you die you will be pushed to another one of the many stages of the tournament, some may be recognizable to you from fictional documents of your world, but others will not. You have a limited amount of lives, so try not to die too quickly. Finally things you learn or that are a part of you remain from stage to stage, but things that you only carry around or use are left behind."

This whole little speech had my head all but spinning, so I stared doing what I always do when I have a problem, I stared asking questions. "What do you mean by destroy? What kind of powers? How many lives do I get? What exactly determines if something stays with me or gets left behind?"

Letting out a short laugh, he responded. "Questions, questions. Ah well, that usually means an entertaining one. In order, you answers are thus. Destroy, kill, remove, incapacitate, whatever term you wish to use, it makes no difference. What powers? Magic, science, the power to bend reality to your every whim, anything you can find and lay claim to. As for how many lives you get, it varies from person to person. You might have a hundred you might lose with the next death. Who knows? And the simplest question to answer. If it is part of your body, it goes where you go, if not, it is part of the stage and stays behind. For example, if you read a book, you will remember the contents after you leave as you normally would, even though the book itself will stay behind. If you go to a medic and have a weapon grafted into your foot, it will go with you, but if you just carry the weapon around, it will stay behind. Simple yes?"

Things were starting to make sense, even if it was in a weird as hell way and broke nearly every constant I had based my entire life on. "What happens if neither of the people kills the other?"

He took a moment to look serious before lapsing back into that annoying grin. "My, my. I do hope I get you again once you get your feet. You are shaper than most. Each stage has a timer built into it. Any player left on a stage when the timer runs out 'wins' the stage and progresses without losing one of there lives. In this way, you can gain extra experience by killing the others and focusing on improving without worry. But at the same time, someone who is behind could hide and sneak around to gain more time to close the gap with those who have more power then they do or to plan and execute a sneak attack. And speaking of the time, ours grows short. But before we part ways, a gift." giving me one last annoying grin, he pointed at me. Then that bastard shot me in the chest with a _bolt of fucking lightning_.

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><p>AN: yes, this is a self-insert mass crossover. No, the self-insert is not going to be a mary sue. In fact, Divergent!Me (D!Me) is going to be dieing a lot in the early chapters as she gets the hang of being in a life and death fight to the finish with nothing more than the contents of her head. Next chapter, "Stage One, Begin!"<p>

Speaking is underlined to maybe make it easier to read (if it doesn't help or makes it harder to follow, leave a comment and I will stop doing it).


	2. Stage One, Begin!

Warning: this fanfic makes use of adult language and semi-frequent references to adult situations. You have been warned.

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><p>Among them, but not of them.<p>

-Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 113.

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><p>Jerking upright again, I immediately bashed my head on something flat, solid and undeniably wooden. Bending over the edge of the rough cot I found myself in, I promptly emptied my stomach onto the floor. After I have finished, and a few extra dry heaves for good measure, I noticed that the floor was packed dirt. Looking around to take stock, I found myself in a long room with a low ceiling. The only things in the room were a line of rough hewn bunk beds along both of the long walls of the room and a number of wood chests. The walls and the ceiling also appeared to by more packed dirt, that or unbelievably filthy. Stumbling slightly, I made my way to the only door in sight and glanced through it. Up a short set of stairs, the room on the other side of the door was quite large, at least compared to the one I just care out of. The ceiling was somewhere between 15 and 20 feet above the floor, and the hall was probably twice that wide and three times that long. A pile of embers burned in a recessed pit in the center of the room, and benches, tables and other rough seating was prevalent. At one end of the hall was a massive pair of double doors, ones that would look more at home in a castle gate than as the front door of what looked all the world like a Norse meeting hall. The room also happened to be completely empty.<p>

Making my way to the massive doors, I saw that one of them had a much smaller door set into it, probably to allow people to come and go without having to open the massive set of doors. The smaller door had a thick wooden slat that could be dropped into a set of brackets to bar the door, but for the moment it was just propped up beside the door. Pulling the smaller door open, I stepped out into the somewhat diffuse light of an overcast day. Beyond the door was a fair sized town square of sorts, a rough circle of packed dirt surrounding an old stone well. Scattered around the square were small hillocks in the place of regular buildings. There were also people, most of whom were staring at me, a fair number of whom had their mouths hanging open. At this point I realized I wasn't still dressed as I had been back home. In fact, I wasn't dressed at all. Letting out a minor curse, I ducked back into the meeting hall. It didn't take long to find the bunk I woke up in, as the puddle of vomit was fairly hard to miss. Rooting around in the chest at the foot of the bunk revealed a few rough homespun dresses but little else, not even a pair of shoes. As I didn't have many options I slipped into one of the dresses, making a note to myself to grab a pair of pants the first chance I got. Strangely enough, my necklace seems to have come along for the ride. Of course, the fact that I literally haven't taken it off in as long as I can remember might have had something to do with it.

Exiting the building for a second time, I got far less notice. Of course most everyone had already gotten an eyeful. Another quick look around confirmed what I had already noticed. the buildings looked to be mostly buried under blocks of sod, kind of like a hobbit hole but much more crude. The women wore homespun dresses like the one I had on, while the men wore long tunics. My plans to get a pair of pants crushed by the fact that no-one here wore them apparently, or shoes for that matter. It looked as if most of the town was gathered in the square, most of whom were eating or resting. Slipping away from the crowd, I climbed up the slanted side of the hillock that the meeting hall was buried under. At the top, I turned a complete circle, looking out across the new landscape I found myself in. "Well, fuck me sideways."

Massive fields of green stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see. An extensive sea of emerald green grass, swaying and beckoning in the gently tugging wind that slid across it surface like a playful child. A awe-inspiring vista, studded with scattered islands of majestic trees, rising like monoliths above their lesser brethren. And all cast over gently undulating hills that made the entire scene look like some fantastical ocean. After standing on that rise for nearly ten minutes, It struck me what was bothering me about the scene. The scale was wrong, the horizon was too far away, and the trees were too uniform. At first I had thought that the trees just weren't that far away, I then I realized that they were bigger the farther away they were from the village, the ones at the edge of my vision must have been as large as mountains!

Sinking slowly to the ground, I fell back and stared up into the sky. Almost to myself I said, "Figures that I end up in Arcadia, the only thing I hate more than nature is people." I don't know how long I stayed up on that hillock, but by the time I returned to the town square all the men had vanished off to somewhere and the women had spread blankets out on the ground. I sat there in the shadow of the massive double doors for a while and watched the other women go about filling clay jars, either with a flour-like powder that they were grinding, or with seeds, water and few other ingredients. At some point or another, one of the women noticed me and managed to drag me into helping out.

Most of the other women were chatting to each other around me, but I didn't bother to join them. Strangely enough, either they were speaking English, or the stage was translating for me. I guess that it was the latter, as their names sounded like someone was trying to hock a spitball. The seeds weren't like anything I was familiar with. They were like corn, but longer and grey and they came off the cob with little more effort than knocking the cob against one of the clay jars. That is how I spend my first day of the tournament, grinding weird corn with utter strangers who's names I couldn't even pronounce.

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><p>AN: ok, got some feedback that the underlining made it harder to read, so I'm not goin' do that anymore. I also might go back and fix some of the errors and problems pointed out to me from the first chapter. Next Chapter: "S1, Planting Seeds"<p>

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	3. S1, Planting Seeds

Warning: this fanfic makes use of adult language and semi-frequent references to adult situations. You have been warned.

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><p>Vita enim mortuorum in memoria vivorum est posita.<p>

-Cicero, _Philippicæ_, IX. 5.

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><p>I spent the next week or so in a haze. Each day I would wake after everyone else had left to go to work for the day. Each day I would slip into the rough and rather itchy dress, and would climb up on top of the lodge, as I have come to call the meeting hall. Each day I would sit there listlessly staring out over the alien landscape or laying back and staring up into the sky. Each day around noon, the sky would cloud up and it would rain heavily, driving me from my exposed perch. Each day I would be grabbed by one woman or another and given a task to help with. Each day I would crawl into my bunk and fall asleep as the villagers gathered in the main room of the lodge to eat and drink and laugh.<p>

Then something changed. one day, as I was making my way toward the door to the square, I noticed a slight glint of metal. This caught my attention more than anything else had yet, due in no small part to the fact that I hadn't seen any sort of metal anywhere in village, and the most advanced piece of technology I had noticed was an old handcart filled with what looked like cabbages. Making my way toward where I had seen the glint, I found an old copper sword resting on a plaque hanging from the wall. The sword was small, between a foot and a half and two feet long, and nearly three inches from edge to edge. It was a gladius, it looked like it had some sort of inscription on the blade, but the rusting on the blade made it impossible to read and I didn't want to touch the weapon. While standing there, nearly transfixed by the blade, something woke up within me, something I hadn't felt in years. Somewhere out there, someone was trying to _kill me_ and something had thrown me into this barbaric hell _intentionally_. They had cursed me and cast me away. I was dirty, I stank like everyone else in this blasted village, my feet hurt from not having shoes, and I hadn't had anything but moldy bread and some sort of thick and nasty meat stew since I got here. Every moment I stood there, the stirring grew stronger and stronger. I finally managed to attach a name to the feeling:

_**Rage**_.

I hadn't felt this sensation in years, I hadn't felt _anything_ in years. All those half-forgotten ways of acting and thinking, abandoned and ignored since I had finally escaped my brother, bubbling back to the top of my mind. The haze that had followed me not just for the past week, but for years, suddenly burned away under the sheer focused _heat_ of the _**Rage**_ burning inside of me. I felt free. I felt focused. I felt slightly hungry. Suddenly, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to find someone who could fight. I was going to _make_ them teach me. And then I was going to find and _kill_ whoever was responsible for sending me to this hell, repeating the first two steps as needed. And God have mercy on anyone who got in my way, because they wouldn't get any from me.

Looking down at the dress I was wearing, one word filtered into my mind: 'impractical'. Reaching down, I began to rip strip after strip of the fabric away. By the time I had finished mutilating the dress, it had lost it's sleeves and everything below about mid-thigh. Heading out into the village, I was greeted by a number of startled gasps from the women who managed to spot me first, followed by more delayed gasps as others looked up to see what the matter was. Ignoring all of them, I headed out to the edge of the village. On reaching the large field that the village sat next to, I climbed up onto one of the fence posts surrounding it. "Oya! Shitheads, who is the best fighter in town?"

This caused nearly everyone in the field to stop and look up, causing several of the nearer ones to do a double take as they ended looking nearly straight up my newly created skirt. Not caring that I wasn't wearing anything under it, I repeated by question. After a few more moments of confusion, one man raised his hand, indicating himself. Once several others had also pointed to him, I jumped down from the post. Heading over toward him, I quickly realized that he was nearly a full foot taller than I was. On reaching him, I grabbed the collar of his tunic and began to drag him toward the edge of the field. I was probably only able to do this due to a combination of shock and curiosity on his part. On reaching the fence again, I turned on him. "You are going to teach me how to fight." Making it clear with my tone that it wasn't a question, but a simple statement of fact.

Letting out a chuckle, he replied with something I actually hadn't expected. "And why would I teach you how to fight? There is no-one that needs fighting, and if there where, it would be the men that should fight. Not skinny little women." I am absolutely certain that the rest of the men working were paying more attention to this little show than to their work. And it suddenly hit me just how backward this chunk of dirt was. Considering all of that, I answered his question in the most direct way I could. I punched him in the gut. That turned out to be a mistake, apparently working in a field every day of your life replaces your muscles with cast iron. On hearing his chuckling in response to my poorly planed attack, I responded again. This time I was smart, so I kicked him in the groin.

Once he had picked himself up off the ground, and the other workers had stopped laughing, I told the large man again that he was going to teach me how to fight. After appearing to think it over for a few minutes, he finally agreed. At which point the did something really unexpected, he handed me a hoe. And when I say hoe, in this case I mean it was a staff with a flat rock tied to one end. At first I thought that he was going to teach me how to fight using that as a weapon, but that wasn't what he had in mind. Instead he made me go up and down the field, working the soil into rows with the crude hoe. The only break came at noon, while it was raining. Just before the rain started, a number of men quickly went down the rows, scattering seeds along the crest of each row. In the afternoon, I helped to tend to the large number of animals that the village kept. Once dark was starting to get nearer, we returned to the field. What had been a field of dirt just before noon, was now filled with pods. Going up and down the rows, the men and I gathered as many of the pods as we could. A quick inspection of the pods revealed then to be the same corn-like plants that the women had been working on in the town square. Once the baskets of pods had been stacked inside the door of the lodge, everyone gathered to eat supper and tell stories and shoot the breeze. However, I was so worn out that I crawled into bed and fell asleep long before the others did.

My days continued like that for months. I worked in the field in the morning, and in the afternoon with the animals. At night, I would stay up listening to the stories the people told. Once or twice they even managed to convince me to tell a story as well. Little changed during this time, occasionally we would switch to a new type of crop and plant that for a while. I learned that the clay pots the other women were filling were stored in one of the several storehouses. I learned that most of the hillocks contained rooms, but that most of the single adults slept in the bunkrooms attached to the lodge. Most married couples had a room or two in one of the other hillocks. I learned that all the buildings were connected underground by a small network of tunnels, and the only entrance was through the lodge. I learned that 'Big Bear', as I head come to call him, was married and had several children. And I learn many other things about the village and those who lived there.

One night, after some time had passed, Big Bear handed me a staff. In truth it was a hoe that had lost it's head. He then spent the next half hour or so carefully showing me exactly how to hold it and how to stand. He even took the time to show me how to block and attack with it. He then spend the next five minutes beating me to a pulp with another staff. The next day I woke up with more bruises than I could count. From then on, that was added to the daily routine. Wake, eat, work the field, eat, tend the animals, harvest, eat, train, sleep, repeat. This continued for several more months, and each night, I went to bed with fewer bruises. Shortly after that, I was introduced to a young man I have taken to calling Little Foot. Due to Big Bear's size, he decided to get someone closer to my size in order to teach me hand to hand fighting. This he managed to do by telling us to beat the crap out of the other.

One morning I woke to find everyone sitting around in the main hall of the lodge. Some were making busy by repairing tools or making replacements for any pots that had been broken over the course of the year, but most were just sitting around and talking. Thinking that it was a holiday, or some other special occasion, I decided to spend the day on top of the lodge. When I opened the door, I was greeted by a solid wall of frozen snow and ice. This was rather surprising mainly because the day before had been in the mid-80s with no sign of a chill. After talking with several of the villages, I found that this happened every year at the same time. And that toward the end of the freeze, there was to be a massive festival.

It was nearly three months before the door was opened one morning to find that the snow had completely vanished, despite having shown no signs of melting the day before. Later that night, the fire pit was coaxed into an enormous blaze that sent flickering shadows throughout the hall. Numerous clay jars of the think brown ale was brought out and passed around. The ale was as thick as bread and as strong as vodka, and it didn't take much for me to get properly smashed from it. Most of my memories come from later in the night, but I remember stories of epic heroes. I remember dancing with the villagers in the firelight and singing along with songs that stirred my blood and made me feel truly alive. And I remember the young men of the village stealing off with some of the young women, sneaking off to private places hidden in the tunnels. I remember Little Foot coming to me, and guiding me into those shadows.

{Note*}

_I remember that being the last night before the world ended._

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><p>AN: oh yes, now things really get started. Next chapter: "S1, New Horizons"<p>

* there is a lemon chapter that fits right here. Not required, but it you wish to read it, it is posted as the first chapter of "Whiplash Lemon". it was removed to avoid having to bump the story's rating to M.

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	4. S1, New Horizons

Warning: this fanfic makes use of adult language and semi-frequent references to adult situations. You have been warned.

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><p>I want to live with all my memories, even if they're sad memories. I believe that if I stay strong, someday I'll overcome the pain, and then I'll be glad that I have those memories. I believe that there are no memories that are okay to forget.<p>

-Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket (Momiji Sohma)

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><p>I woke up early the next morning, still tangled up in Little Foot's arms. I am not sure what woke me up, but there was an un-abating sense of dread that hung in the air like a foul mist. It didn't take long to rouse Little Foot, just a few hard pokes on the bite marks I had left on his shoulder, and before long the pair of us were up and dressed. The we headed back to the lodge, hand in hand and him leading the way. It wasn't long before we could smell the smoke, unlike the normal smell of wood smoke that filled the lodge, this was the sticky-sweet cloying smell of burning meat. moving faster as we burst into the lodge, we didn't even notice the threat until it was too late. A step behind and two steps lower on the small flight of stairs, I could only watch in horror as what looked like an over sized crowbar smashed its way through Little Foot's head and skimmed across the top of my head. His hand twitched and clamped down on mine before it relaxed before he tumbled forward and I was sent reeling down to the floor of the lodge.<p>

The _things_ where everywhere. They were at least seven feet tall, even with their slouching posture, and looked like giant, oversized, bipedal rats. Each carried a weapon that looked like a cross between a crude sword and a crowbar. The one that had just killed Little Foot and covered myself in chunks of his brain, was between me and the door. Still somewhat dazed from the blow, I began to crawl away from it as it followed behind with an expression I could only call a leer. Before long, I found my back pressed against the fall wall of the lodge. looking down the length of the hall, I was hit by an unbelievable wave of sadness, as I suddenly understood that I had slowly come to enjoy living here. All down the length of the lodge, the dead littered the floor. Big Bear was pinned to a wall by no fewer than three of the crude weapons, a hoe in one hand and surrounded by at least a dozen dead rat-things. Little Foot laying headless where we had rushed blindly into the hall. Others I had know and talked with laying slaughtered on the ground.

There were at least forty of the rat-things in the hall, either mutilating the corpses or watching the hallways for more strays. Two more of the rat-things had joined the one that had killed Little Foot, forming a rough circle around me. It was at this point I decided that if I was going to die, I was going to die like Big Bear, taking as many with me as I could. Standing up, my back still pressed against the wall, my shoulder bumped into something. _The Sword_. Then something strange happened. My hand reached out and grabbed the hilt of the sword, and suddenly I was outside of my body, merely watching it act. As soon as my hand touched the hilt of the sword, the entire length of the blade lit up like a tesla coil. The sword sheared through the thick wooden frame locking it in place as if the wood was no stronger than hot butter, trailing a line of sparks from the tip of the blade. I watched my body move faster than anything I had ever seen, slicing through the first rat-thing from shoulder to opposite hip as if the beast was made of mist before whipping the sword back upward, removing the weapon arm and a large chunk of ear from the next in line. By the time the second one had already lost its arm, the third was only just beginning to react, trying to leap backward away from the glowing blade that was carving through its companions. The rat-thing was far too slow, and the blade swept down, severing both of its legs halfway down the thigh.

Every one of the creatures had turned to face me, as the two living, but heavily wounded ones began to howl in pain. And for a single startled moment, everything alive in the room was shocked, the rat-things because of some unexpected resistance and myself because I had no idea what had happened. Then my body began to move again, just as quickly as before, rushing forward it raced down the length of the lodge. While leaping the fire pit in the center of the hall, I noticed that a body had fallen into the coals, which explained the smell. Two more of the creatures managed to either get in my body's way, or failed to move aside in time. Both fell. And then, I was outside, racing away from the village and the creatures. I watched as my body ran, day and night for nearly two days, never stopping, never resting.

At the end of the second day, I found myself in the center of another town much like the one I had fled. The sword slipped from my insensate fingers and clattered to the ground, drawing the attention of the villagers. Suddenly, I found myself back in control of my own body, so I did the one reasonable action that had been occupying much of my mental actively for the last 48 hours, I screamed until I blacked out.

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><p>AN: and thus, things finally get rolling. Next chapter: "S1, Finding a Foe"<p>

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